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The Race
The Race was a reptilian alien/creature species that invaded Earth in 1942. Due to their reptilian-like appearance, they came to be called "Lizards" by humans. They came from a planet that orbits Tau Ceti called Home. Prior to their arrival on Earth, they had conquered two other planets, Rabotev 2 around 12058 BCE, and Halless 1 around 3058 BCE. Characteristics Biology The Race is reptilian, with a bone structure that differs slightly from that of humans. Their lifespans tend to be longer than humans. The Race appear to be a Saurian species or at the very least Reptiles, they are warm blooded, having a body temperature slightly higher then that of humans, but they oddly enough have very great difficulty operating in Cold Environments (like Northern Russia or Europe in winter), and rejected at least one possible new colony because the world was even colder than Earth. The race have claws on their fingers and toes (and their technology is built with this in mind) capable of acting as weapons. They also have very sharp teeth and what is referred to as a "tail stump" and is probably the atrophied remains of a tail lost during evolution, (despite this most illustrations show members of the race with tails). They have no tear ducts. Ginger has a narcotic affect on both males and females of the Race, and as stated below, disrupts females' sexual cycles. Members of the Race can also become intoxicated from alcohol. Reproduction Members of The Race are seasonal breeders. They are sexually inactive for all but a few weeks of the year, at which point the females become fertile and emit pheromones which drive the males into a state of arousal strong enough to overcome all other priorities. Enraged males often fight over females. These fights are sometimes fatal. When females consume ginger, their hormonal cycles are disrupted and they become fertile and emit pheromones immediately. After sex, females gestate their fertilized eggs for several weeks. After laying them in a suitable nesting spot, they abandon them. The hatchlings receive no parental care from either parent much akin to characteristics of certain species of animals on Earth. Race Hatchlings are born with an egg tooth, and are essentially miniature versions of the adults. When hatchlings emerge, they do so with their motor skills fully developed but they are highly anti-social: Race hatchlings instinctively avoid anything larger than themselves. At the age of 3 months, Race hatchlings become predatory in nature and have to be taught not to attack their own kind. Due to their considerably greater physiological development and self reliance at birth, cases of surviving feral children are much more common in the history of The Race than in that of humans. Homeworld The Race's homeworld, Tau Ceti II (known to The Race simply as "Home") revolves around a class II Secchi class star. Its elliptical orbit is half as long as Earth's, and its climate is much hotter and dryer. Its oceans are very small and consequently hold few petroleum deposits. Animal inhabitants on the planet include a predator which hunts in a manner similar to the Trapdoor spider and pterosaur-like creatures. Culture The Race holds their own language in high esteem and usually think lowly of human languages. They see change as something inherently bad, and are thus extremely conservative. They are technologically advanced, but embrace technological progress only at a glacial pace. Race hierarchy is shown through body paint, which takes a role similar to that of badges and clothing in human society. The more complex one's body painting, the higher you are in the hierarchy. The Race believe in imposing their culture on planets they annex. While not actually racist in the traditional sense (of actually hating others races/species), the Race is capable of chauvinism. They apparently teach their subjects the superiority of the Race culture, and encourage their vanquished subjects to be grateful that the Race stopped wars and infighting (at least in the case of the Rabotev's). Due to their biology the Race has certain slang terms that while similar to human ones are also uniquely race, for instance, someone in serious trouble is going to "Regret the day he was hatched". (See terminology below). The Race has been ruled by the Ssumaz dynasty for more than 50,000 years. However, individuals of the Race have a great degree of personal freedom, as do their subjects, as long as they do not conflict with the Race Empire's policies. Due to distance between Home and its colonies, the Emperor's power devolves to the government of the colonies. The parts of Earth captured by the race were ruled by Atvar until the 1970s. The Race appear to expand to gain space for themselves. Historically, the Race has sought to conquer relatively close and populated worlds. The Race's technological conservatism means that after they developed their versions of Relativity theory they did not consider the possibility that there might be ways around it. In the 2030s, for example, they were shocked to learn that humanity had discovered a way to travel faster than light, and they were forced to begin a crash program to catch up. Assuming the Race could not steal the technology, they estimated it would take at least 70 years to catch up with the humans. This will likely force seismic shifts in their culture as the Race fights to survive against the more advanced humans. Because there is no biological impetus to care for one's hatchlings, and because sexual encounters are undertaken so casually when they occur and ignored for the rest of the year, the Race does not have a family structure. The only exception is the Emperor, who is guaranteed to be a son of his predecessor because emperors keep a personal harem whose members mate exclusively with him. However the Race colonists that arrived and lived on Earth, after being exposed to ginger which affected their sexual biology, slowly accepted the custom of marriage or "exclusive mating arrangements"; this became the basis of family units. Despite their lack of family sentiment (which is one reason why tensions tend to run high between generations) adult members of the Race are not antisocial. Indeed, friendship is the most important relationship that the Race culture recognizes. Religion The Emperor is elevated to a god-like status in Race society. Members of The Race are taught at birth to lower their eyes in reverence at any evocation of the Emperor in conversation. The Emperor's birthday (known to The Race as "Hatching Day") is celebrated once every 6 months (a year for The Race). The Race afterlife consists of eternal servitude to past Emperors. Emperor worship is so deeply ingrained into Race culture that the concept of "impericide" is virtually unthinkable. The Race on Earth view and regarded human religions as "superstitions", in which many of the dogmatic humans (including Christians, Muslims, and Jews) were hastily offended by their behavior, especially when the Race started taxing "superstitions" in Race-held territories. Their derisiveness of human religions result in heavy riots and discord in Race-territories, particularly in the Middle East. *(See Emperor-worship) Subject worlds and races As well as their own homeworld, the Race has two subject planets; Epsilon Eridani and Epsilon Indi (known as Rabotev 1 and Halless 2 to the Race). Both planets' indigenous dominant lifeforms, the Rabotevs and the Hallessi, are similar to the Race in biology as well as evolutionary pace. Little is revealed of their history before their subjugation to the Empire, other than that the Hallessi had an identical form of government, while the Rabotevs were divided among competing mini-empires. At least one of these races practised slavery, though it is unspecified which. Terminology The Race, being a slow-evolving species, is more often at peace than in conquest, result in having their language in lacking of specific words for all things military. The following is a list of various terms in the language of the Race and their equivalent, as well as other new concepts that the Race has had to learn: *'Big Ugly': Derogatory slang term that Race soldiers came up with for humans (known as Tosevites to the Race) after arriving on Earth, referring to the fact that humans are much taller than the Race. *'Fleetlord': : Highest ranking officer of the race, equivalent to an Admiral of the Fleet. One is charged with commanding the conquest fleet, and the other in charge of the colonization fleet. *'Home': Original home system of the Race, Tau Ceti II. *'Killercraft': Fighter jet. *'Landcruiser': Armored personnel carrier. *'Troopcarrier': Armored personnel carrier. *'Not-empire': Sovereign state governed by some form other than inherited monarchy. (Before arriving on Earth, the Race had no concept of political organization except by hereditary monarchy). *'Snout-counting': Derogatory term for democracy. *'Soldiers' time': A period of military training and conscription, when the Emperor of the Race launches a conquest on a planet. Two "soldiers' times" were declared before the Race came to Earth, corresponding to the two worlds conquered by the Race prior to Earth. *'Spice': Ginger. The Race also have the habit of referring to individual Earth "not-empires" in the native language of the "Tosevites" living there. The exception is that of Nippon (Japan), which survived as an independent empire following the war. Their peoples are rendered as simple rewordings of such. For example, Nazi Germany is "Deutschland" and its people are the "Deutsche," and in comparison, Britain remains "Britain" (which helps English-language readers) but the British are instead the "Britainish." The Japanese are referred to as Nipponese, a hybrid of Japanese and English (the Japanese refer to themselves as Nihon-jin) 'Related ' * Race Mimicking Technology Despite interstellar travel, cryogenics, and various other technological advances (like tectonic plate manipulation) which are far beyond even our present level, the Race is often considered to have military technology similar to that of the 1990s. Landcruisers are tanks and killercrafts are supersonic aircraft (the latter were particularly deadly in the first day of the war). The Race's war technology did not change, even while on Earth. By the 1960s, human military technology was nearing parity on the ground, and beginning to make an impact in space. By the 2030s, the Race was badly outmatched and searching for a way to escape the disaster they found themselves in. The Race's military technology had frozen a hundred thousand years before, when Home was politically unified and warfare ended. Subsequently the Race chose to reuse its old war machines only for conquest of other planets, and since these presented no military challenge, the Race's war technology stopped advancing. Under their unified government, the Race progressed extremely slowly, both technologically and socially. Upon invading Earth, they were amazed by humanity's rapid progress over a few hundred years. As a result, they were unprepared for the tenacity and skill that humans used in defending their respective territories -- and the quick victory they expected did not come to pass. Although the Race was able to conquer the Southern Hemisphere of Earth in the initial invasion, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany remained Earth's greatest free powers once they developed and deployed atomic weapons. Canada, Britain, and Japan also retained their independence, although the Race did not have full diplomatic relations with them. The Race had previously conquered two other species, the Rabotevs and the Hallessi. These were extremely similar to the Race biologically, though ginger was not narcotic to them. The social differences between the three species were also very slight, although the two cultures in question were much more primitive than the Race when their planets were conquered. As of the 2030s, the Race's technology had fallen behind that of humans, and with the human discovery of FTL, the Race was being forced to catch up. Various theories have been advanced as to why the Race progresses more slowly than humanity. One is that the lack of large bodies of water on the Race's homeworld meant that all empires (before the unification of Home) were land-based, and so lacked the rapid expansion that sea-empires could create. Another theory is based on the fact that the Race does not have sexual selection, as they breed only in periodic orgies where the patriarchial line cannot be known (except for the Emperor). The Race are therefore not motivated by their sex drive, at least not in the same way humans are, and perhaps this lack of sex drive is related to their lack of innovation. Race Race *